


Only a Reward

by ahimsabitches



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, oh god so much fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8404687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: Bonnie gives John a birthday present.





	

The six months marching up to John’s 148th birthday had been remarkable—in all the wrong ways.

 _They come in threes_ , his mother used to say. _The big hits of life, John me lad. Joys, tragedies, vexations._

He, young and sure in his robust grip on his own destiny, had had no need for his mother’s empty platitudes. But, it turned out, he was less able to talk, shoot, fight, or fuck his way around the _big hits_ than he’d thought even fifty years ago.

 John sat on the edge of his and Bonnie’s bed and let himself fall back.  He landed heavily and puffed up a cloud of his and Bonnie’s combined scent. He breathed deep of it and clung tightly to the comfort it brought.

His mother, bless her and damn her, had been right. It had come in threes, and heaven willing, they were done.

He ran his living hand through his hair—grown to his shoulders and striped with a wide band of white at both temples—and, too tired to lift it back up, let lie above his head. His cybernetic hand rested on the peak of his bare belly. Shadows huddled in the seams of the ceiling beams as if hiding from the soft yellow glow of the lamp on the bedside table.

Emily’s death was the first. Of course it hit poor Jimbo the hardest, but the random senselessness of her leaving life—and her husband and children--behind was like the ripple of boiling debris that roared out from a stellar death (John had seen, and felt, his fair share of those): it had blown them all off their feet.

Neither his mother laid up with a stubborn case of pneumonia nor Aurie’s headquarters attacked by rivals were precisely _surprising_ , given the steel-strong strand of bullheaded self-reliance that ran from grandmother through father to daughter and, probably, maybe, on and on and on. But they did worry at John’s effervescent jolliness like ants at a sugarcube. Aurie had walked a path uncannily similar to his own, and the risks of being a smuggler who worked with pirates and turncoat Fed agents were, as John knew in his bones, lethal.

But John had faith in his middle cub; knowing both of them she’d pop up in a few days in some odd corner of the galaxy, doing something entirely not legal and laughing merrily about it. One corner of John’s mouth slid up into a tired smile, then dipped back down.

As agonizing as the thought was, he had far less faith in his mother’s resilience, which had been legendary until recently. This was her second case of pneumonia in as many years, and her 200th birthday was just days after his 148th.

Something dark and heavy and mortal moved in the deep backwaters of his brain like the cryptic, hungry presence of the Expanse, the blighted scar of idiot emptiness through which he’d captained his last ship. He screwed his eyes shut and lay his living arm over them in a tiredly desperate negation of that black and bitter mire.

He’d walk that plank when the sword was at his back, and not before.

John lay his cybernetic hand on Bonnie’s pillow and sighed. He wanted his wife. He wanted her arms around his neck and her kiss on his brow. He wanted the curve of her arse under his hands and he wanted the demanding heat she kept under her clothes. “Hurry home, Bonns,” he murmured to the dim bedroom. “Needja.”

Footsteps outside the shut door. Two quiet raps. “Pap?” Rue.

“Aye.”

“Fergot t’tell ya. Postman brought somethin’ for ya t’day. Small ruddy package, but he made me sign fer it. Mus’ be important.”

“What’s the postmark on it, lass?”

A pause. “Pleiades.”

Not from Jim, then, or Barkly. Probably something for Bonnie. Sometimes things for Bonnie came addressed to him, especially if they came from humans. Her headquarters was on Rhea, one of the well-kept planets wandering around (he could never remember which star it was) in the Pleiades group.

“Jes’ leave it by th’ door. I’ll get it.”

A rustle, then another pause, longer this time. “Got some o’ Mum’s purple haze tea brewin, ‘case y’ wanted. An’ don’t worry ‘bout the laundry or th’ garden. I’ll take care o’ chores.  If y’feel like stuffin yer gob, I’ll leave a plate o’ roast out. Almost as good as mum's. Still a far cry from yers, but it'll fill yer gut well enough.”

If Aurie went with the wind, Rue stood like a rock. Each of his cubs held a piece of him, and Rue’s piece was unflagging, relentlessly cheerful benevolence. A swell of love rose in him and squeezed his heart. “Thanks, lassie,” he said thickly.

Her footsteps receded. John lay where he was for a moment longer, then groaned his way to his feet and opened the door.

Rue was right; the package was small: only a little bigger than Bonnie’s keepsake box, but heavy for its size. And nondescript, wrapped only in the thin crackling sheets of cross-galaxy shipping aluminum. His name was printed on the shipping label, and then it struck him that his birthday was tomorrow.

“Wonder who…” he trailed off, turning the small square package on its side to read the return address: _Planetary Reclamation and Conservation PAC, 626 Gilead Down 4Q Rhea, AA-Alcyone, PLE._ John’s eyebrows rose. “Bonnie? What the devil…” He backed into the bedroom, leaving the door ajar, and plunked back down on the bed. He turned the package over in his hands and resisted the urge to use the x-ray lens in his cybernetic eye. If it was _for_ Bonnie, it wasn’t his business until she told him about it. If it was _from_ Bonnie, it was probably a birthday present and he’d be a childish arse if he were to spoil his own surprise. He could take off the wrappings at least.

Since they’d had cubs, he’d made modifications to his cybernetics, mostly at Bonnie’s strenuous urging. So gone was his mace; gone was the laser cannon (he still missed it); and gone too were the delicate, prehensile lockpicks he’d used to break into vaults, crack motherboard casings, and loot intercepted freight without leaving a trace. Bonnie hadn’t wanted these gone; he’d removed them himself to make room for a better pistol (he’d put his foot down against Bonnie about that one) and a better interface for his upgraded hand.  
His mouth quirked as a memory flashed: Bonnie’s eyes lighting up when she saw the new hardware. “It looks more like your other one!” Then, panic had crossed her face and she’d grabbed his cybernetic fingers. “ _But do the fingers still vibrate, John_?”

He’d shown her instead of telling her.

He chuckled and sloughed off the crinkly aluminum wrapping. A simple wooden box was beneath it. It was rough and unsanded, its upper hinge offset from its lower like a crooked jaw. The wood itself was rich red and redolent of earth and spice. There was no lock. He opened it. A folded piece of paper rested atop something else. He lay the box on his lap and read Bonnie’s scrupulous, looped cursive:

_John my love,_

_Please throw the box in the bloody fire. It was my first attempt at carving and I’m absolute rubbish. The wood comes from one of the Cygnus planets we recently wrested out of Federation hands. It smells amazing when you burn it.  
_

_I was going to give you this (not the box) for your 150th, but after the year ~~you’ve~~ we’ve had, I thought you’d need it and appreciate it more now.  
_

_The chain and casing are smelted from what little bits of Flint’s Trove we could hunt down, beg, barter, and wheedle. The smith grumbled quite a bit when I handed him a bag of dirty old coins and jewelry, but he did a brilliant job. The garnets and emeralds set into the face are from the Trove as well. At least that’s what the broker swore.  
_

_Now you can have all your treasures in one place. Happy birthday, mo iarainn mathan.  
_

_Until the stars fall,_  
B

_P.S.~ the top button on the side pauses the cycle. The bottom button is reverse._

“Me Bonnie lass,” he murmured, the smile enduring on his face now. He set the note on the bedside table.

Beneath it, cradled in a nest of red velvet, was a golden device that John first took for a pocketwatch: large, round, with a chain coiled beside it. He gently took it out with his living hand. It rested well in his palm; cool and heavy. There was something about the cover—John pawed at the lamp’s dimmer switch without taking his eyes from the thing in his hands. Soft yellow light reared into the room and suddenly the thing in John’s living hand glowed. His mouth went slack.

He’d never considered his lust for gold and jewels a _weakness_ ; after all, money walked and money talked, and John liked to do a lot of both. Power and influence came easily to garrulous, charming Ursids who knew how and when to use their size to protect, to intimidate, to steer people as they liked. So since treasure—and everything it bought him—allowed him to be himself better than he could have been without it, he’d have been a fool not to want as much as he could get his paws on. He may have lost sight of a few things and gotten a few priorities skewed, but nobody was perfect. Flint had been a rotting bilge dog as far as John was concerned, and John had only been reclaiming what was rightfully his.

Oilslick whorls spun and swirled on the round smooth surface of the thing: different metals expertly melted, stirred, and forged into something far dearer than the droubloons and rings it had been in its previous life. John brushed his cybernetic thumb over its surface. The enhanced tactile interface sent a subtle shiver of smooth metal on metal to his brain. He let his fingers wander down the chain, basking in the pleasing velvet feeling of it. The twisted hexagonal links gleamed different colors, and John discerned a pattern: gold, adamantium, copper, platinum, and, of course, silver. The chain ended in a silver clasp.  
John flipped the thing over. The back was as plain—and as wondrously not—as the front. The melded metals reminded him of the rich, blooming nebulas through which he’d sailed, full of the madly whirling color of starbirth. He flipped it back over and opened the eye-and-tooth hasp. The lid opened like an oyster and John gasped quietly.

The face, made of lustrous pearl infused with pale rainbows, was ringed with double rows of russet garnets and green emeralds, and John thought for a moment it was a pocketwatch, but there were no hands sprouting from the tiny dark circle in the center of the thing. Instead, there was only a small button at six o’clock, which John instinctively pressed.

His parents, looking as they had when Sophia was barely a thought, sprang into tiny, holographic life. His father kissed his mother on the cheek and she laughed soundlessly. His mother blew a kiss at the recorder, her smile as bright as the gems encircling her. The hologram changed. Barkly hoisted one of his kittens in each arm, the other four clustered around him. They all grinned and the kittens waved cheerily at the recorder—at John. Barkly winked out and then Jim, dear Jim, trim and proud in his colonel’s uniform, ran in circles as his son Johnny gave toddling chase. Emily, young and vital and laughing, and their girl Triss joined the lark and suddenly Jim stopped in his tracks, and his family plowed into him, laughing silently. A hot, spiky lump rose in John’s throat and he gritted his teeth against a sob.

Bonnie, her hair still its youthful shade of jeweled redbrown, blipped into Jim’s place, and now John did sob. He remembered recording this himself: standing beside her in the kitchen as she flipped vegetables deftly in a skillet at the stove. _Bugger off, you great lump,_ she mouthed, grinning bashfully. The lens slipped down and rested on the graceful arc of her pregnant belly before swooping past her to Aurie and Sophia, small cubs both, sitting on the living room floor, bent studiously over the empty adamantium husk of his old cybernetic leg.

John grinned and a tear tracked down his face, detouring in the deep lines of age.

His cubs appeared next. He remembered this too, but Bonnie was the one behind the camera. In the last few years, with Bonnie preparing for retirement, Sophia abroad either teaching or traveling with her research team, Aurie being Admiral Aurelia Silver and Rue bouncing from job to job, they were seldom in one place at the same time. But last year the stars had aligned and all five of them had been home for a whole week. By the end, Soph and Aurie had been at each other’s throats and Bonnie had been clawing her way out the door, but for a little while, harmony existed. Hologram-Rue, the shortest and stoutest of them, leaned over the bar in the kitchen, mouth moving. Aurie, most like her mother about the face and most like her father about everything else, stood beside her, sipping from an ale mug. Sophia, willow-tall and gracefully thin, stood in the kitchen pouring coffee for herself and Rue. Rue caught sight of the camera and waved. Hi Mum, she mouthed. Aurie lifted her mug and winked. Sophia mouthed something John couldn’t catch and didn’t remember. But he remembered Bonnie, behind the camera, saying _These are my children, whom I fortunately did not kill or eat before they could reach adulthood_.

 _Despite temptation, eh, Mum_? Rue mouthed, and Sophia shot an arrow at Aurie with her eyes as she sipped her coffee.

John laughed. It came out a strangled bark.

The next hologram flickered, its edges furred with age. He saw a broad spread of coveralled back and a shock of ravenblack hair. The figure, a distinctly Ursid one—female—strode away from the recorder proudly. But something called it back, and when the figure in the hologram turned, John’s heart slammed to a stop between his suddenly airless lungs.

Daisy, beautiful and wild and dirty after a day’s work at the mine where she’d lived before he’d met her, oh _Daisy_ , his lost Daisy, decades gone, shot an arch look at whoever held the recorder. Her expressive face broke into a brilliant, toothy grin that doubled John over. She said something to the camera, laughed, then turned away and continued walking.

Bonnie, in close-up so that only her head and shoulders were visible, flicked into view. The Bonnie before him was Bonnie now, aged past him by her human genes. Though her eyes were still bright and her back was still straight, her hair fell down her shoulders and back in moonwhite waves and the topography of her face was much more deeply marked. White cloth—his shirt-- hung over one of her shoulders; the other was bare. She held up a heart, made with thumbs and first fingers. I love you, John, she mouthed. Always.

The projection blinked off.

John sat, the holo-locket cupped in his living hand and his cybernetic hand over his mouth, tears leaking freely from his living eye.

“Did that only just arrive?”

He jerked up at the sudden voice in front of him. Bonnie stood in the doorway, her face gently worried.

“Suppose it did,” she said, eyeing the box and shipping aluminum in his lap, clad only in his sleeping shorts. “At least you got it in time.”

John opened his arms. Bonnie smiled the same warm, loving smile he’d just seen in the holo and went to him. He clamped down on her tight and muffled a heaving sob in her traveling coat. She snaked her arms around his neck and laid her cheek on the crown of his head. He smelled her scent under the harried ozone odor of space travel, and the deep familiarity of it made him ache with love, both wrenchingly gone and newly smelted. He ached with the memory of loss and the ruthless black mire of what was to come. He ached, he ached.

“My father had a saying,” she said softly after a while. “I’ve carried it with me my whole life, and I don’t think you’ve ever heard it. ‘There is no remedy for emotional pain; only a reward for endurance.’”

John held her until his arms trembled. She cupped his bearded face in her hands after he released her and leveled his eyes with hers.  They were luminous and full of unspilled tears. The delicate deltas of crowsfeet fanning from the corners of her eyes crinkled.  “I’m not saying the holo is adequate reward for anything you’ve been or done over these years, John, because all the galaxies in the wide wild universe aren’t enough. But I hope this helps. A little.”

John laughed again, and this time it was a rusty wheeze. A little? _A little?_ The thing still nestled in his hand, warm now from his living heat, was everything. Everything that had driven him forward and given him spark and solace. The swirling galaxy of _him_.

“Lass,” he croaked. “ _Bonns_. This…” he gazed at the little golden treasure in his hand. “This is… _perfect_. This is more than…” his voice cracked, then caught in his throat. Openmouthed and wordless he looked at her, a green-eyed galaxy, a strong-shouldered universe all to herself, and could only shake his head. She drew him back into her arms, and when he trusted himself to speak again, the question surprised him more than it seemed to surprise her. “Where did y’ find th’ holo of Daisy?” He asked the slope of her neck.

“Remember when I did that Ursid oral history project? I went to visit her mother on that mining planet you told me about,” she said. “You should have seen her face when I told her to whom I was married.” Bonnie chuckled and kissed John’s temple. “But she must've had a change of heart, because I got the holo in the mail from her a couple weeks later. She was a tough old thing. I liked her a lot.”

The vise on his heart tightened again and he scrubbed fresh tears from his living eye. “Ye’re jes’ _determined_ t’rip me heart from me chest t’night, aren’t ye, lassie?”

Bonnie smiled, tossed her traveling coat on the bed, and perched on his lap. “I just wanted to thank you for same, _mo iarainn mathan_.”

Silver took her face in his cybernetic hand and kissed her, long and deep. "Are ye too exhausted t' comfort this sentimental ol' fool?" He asked her, their foreheads touching. Her silverwhite braid slid off her shoulder and hung between them. He took it lovingly and untied the band at the end.

"Not if you're not too heartsore to welcome this cranky old lady home."

They were neither.


End file.
